A CENSUS OF THE SENSES/LA INCUESTA de los SENTIDOS

Portraits of El Pital

2008-07-25T18:48:00.001-07:00

What are Cordels?

2008-07-23T15:24:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Kurt Wooten of Habla for introducing us to the idea of "cordels"!

A Bit About Cordels

Portuguese for ("string literature") are popular and inexpensively printed booklets pamphlets containing folk novels, poems and songs, which are produced and sold in fairs and by sidestreet vendors in the northeast of Brazil. They are so named because they are hung from strings in order to display them to potential clients. They form one of the least altered continuations of the Western traditions of popular literature, such as chapbooks, and popular prints.

They are usually produced in black and white, in quarto format, and are illustrated with woodcuts. They come from the papel volante tradition of Portugal. The cordel literature found its zenith in the decades of 20s and 30s, with the popular legend created by the cangaceiros of Lampião, a band of outlaws and bandolier bandits who terrorized the region for almost 20 years. The War of Canudos, a military conflict in the state of Bahia, 1896-1897, has been also a frequent theme of cordel literature, due to its epic dimensions and importance for the history of the Northeast backlands.

There are a lot of not-well-known cordel authors in Brazil. Two expressive woodcutters are Adir Botelho and Jose Francisco Borges, whose woodcuts have been exhibited in the Louvre and the Smithsonian.

Examples

http://www.cordelon.hpg.ig.com.br/biblioteca_cordel.htm

http://www.ablc.com.br/

Census Results -- Final Thoughts

2008-07-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

HOW MANY PEOPLE NEED TRUE LOVE?

Our census of the senses showed us that although true love exists it is not possible or even necessary for all. The range of answers was thought provoking and impressive. Answers ranged from an espousal that God was the only thing capable of true love to comments that orphans are the only ones that need true love. Other answers were more exact, stating that 6 people need true love or even a billion. The day ended without numbers but with buoyant hearts that almost danced like rain clouds above our heads as we walked back to the Un Mundo building. As the questions stirred in our heads about the question of our census we reached to revisit questions about this type of work, driven by big questions and then attempted to weave connections with the present tense of the students. We lingered in thoughts about relationships and partnerships and the arts role in community development but more in how people learn and how these type of engagements create bonds of shared experience and hopefully new levels of understandings of ourselves and the world we live in.

Stitching It Together -- The Culminating Event

2008-07-23T15:21:00.000-07:00

In order to complete the cordel, we partnered with local artisanos from the Juan Pablo Segundo Sewing Cooperative. Rosario and Leslie assisted us in creating pockets for each canvas that was to be hung and to sew a blue seem around the edges to create a more finished look. The final touches seams really did provide the finished and detailed aesthetic we had hoped for and we left excited to share the work with our students early the next day.

Three of the students met us at seven o’clock on Monday morning to hang the cordel. With the support of Oscar, the Principal and the school staff, we managed to be the closing act of the national Dia de Limpira celebration in honor of Limprira, Honduras’ indigenous hero. After Suyapa, who was chosen as the local India Bonita, explained the projects, we invited all the students to watch the poetry performance and to engage with the canvases that danced ever so slightly this hot and humid day. In each pocket waited paper and pens to use to answer the question. Below, were creamy candies to be taken in exchange for their answers. Our performers were both nervous and hot. After some wrangling, we managed to gather them in front of the line for a thirty-second performance. We yelled our poem with smiles on our faces with a somewhat aloof yet supportive audience. After the sharing Elly Goetz, the Un Mundo’s Co Director, invited the class to perform at a coming up concert and dance performance. They ladies shyly accepted. We all gathered in front of the pulperia where we shared a soda and congratulated and thanked on another. The cordel was collected from the line and given to the school to hang in the newly constructed classrooms that were, at the time, naked green walls.

Video Interviews on the Main Road

2008-07-23T15:20:00.000-07:00

VIDEO INTERVIEWS

Out of this postering process inspired an impromptu canvassing on the community on true love via interviews with local community members and school personnel. Rae and Xiomara, one of our students, interviewed the two women who lived/worked down the road and reported that the women felt that all partners fail us, and that what’s most important in thinking about true love is love for yourself. One man, Santos, on his way to run an errand was stopped. He commented that true love only came through suffering. Another man working on the building construction of the school, said that true love for him was lost, it went away a year ago, into the arms of another. Local little ones shook their heads and said they didn’t know what true love was. The counselor at the school said that there are all kinds of love and that school is about learning that love goes beyond romantic love. Xiomara was a great interviewer, asking our essential question to each person. It was fascinating to watch the students really take the lead on the video and postering process. We weren’t sure at times if they were with us; this last stage of the process convinced us that they’d been with us the whole time. As we walked through the community after class we smiled as we observed the juxtaposition of the students hand made posters beside the faded advertisements for sodas and snacks.

Poetry, Performance, Postering

2008-07-23T15:18:00.001-07:00

POETRY PERFORMANCE REHEARSAL

Once all the cloths were completed, we gathered around and assessed our work. We talked about which one was our favorite and commended one another for our hard work. To plan for our final installation/presentation on Monday, we all created a group poem based on the form from Juarroz’s poem. We all agreed that in answer to our question, all people need true love, but...and each person had to finish the phrase with their own contrary warning, question, fact, or sentiment regarding love. The poem goes something like:

All people need true love,

But true love is hiding in the clouds.

All people need true love,

But true love does not exist.

All people need true love,

But true love is hiding in the dark.

All people need true love,

But true love is hiding under the rocks.

All people need true love

But it is difficult to find

We practiced this poem together, saying the repetitive line in unison and then each student shouting their own original line.

POSTER MAKING

We decided as a group that we had to figure out how to invite people to come to our Monday presentation and be involved in the process. Everyone made a poster with their stencils and then wrote their own original poetry line on the poster. We didn’t add more information on purpose. We wanted the community to feel a sense of mystery and sense of curiosity.

POSTERING THE COMMUNITY

A few students stayed after class and decided to poster the images around the community an impromptu group postering outing. This turned out to be so much fun and one of the best aspects of the projects. The students, led my Martin, went from place to place asking if they could staple the posters. Almost everyone said yes except the man who worked at the local “trensito” who just shook his head no. Trensito means little caboose and I heard later that this space is a gathering spot for local men to have a drink. So maybe he didn’t want anything to do with statements on love. Two women who worked at a tienda down the street from the school had a lot to say about true love. Rae had been video taping our whole postering process, so I ran back to her and said that she had to return to the ladies and get their viewpoints. She went with Xiomara to interview them.

Translating Text into Image/Stencil Making Workshop

2008-07-23T15:17:00.000-07:00

TRANSLATING TEXT TO IMAGE/ESSENTIAL LINE EXERCISE

We asked them to select a line or a strong image in their poetry and to think of an image that best represents that idea or word. Students were led through an “essential lines” exercise in order to introduce the idea of stencil making. Students drew arms reaching for hearts, parrots, moons, stars, oceans, faces, and abstract arms that looked like an interior love organ. They began cutting the negative spaces with exacto blades and as we cut, we talked more about our final installation.

STENCIL APPLICATION

We woke up at 6 in order to be at the school by seven a.m. Rich coffee started the day. When we arrived, we set up our materials table again and gathered the students. The students all discussed the words and letters we would need to complete the featured question and made decisions about which stencils to match with which words. The process was organic and each student had the chance to practice spraying, arranging letters, and gathering pairs of images that looked beautiful together. Everyone worked in groups and teams to make sure that all five words in our question were present.

Poetry Writing Intensive

2008-07-23T15:15:00.000-07:00

We asked every student to think of a response to this question and to answer it in the form of a poem. To teach poetry, we used a form by one of my favorite poets, Roberto Juarroz, who wrote “The Sixth Vertical Poetry.” In the poem, the poet states one fact, and then offers a contrary thought to accompany it. For example, “the word is full of voices/but no one speaks it.” (Include the poem in a final essay version). Rachel and I began to write a collaborative poem as an example: “Friendship likes to sit under a treee/but true love swims in the middle of the night.”. We asked the students to notice a pattern in the poem and to interpret the power of the last line, “everything is fleeing/toward its presence.” Once we felt that they were immersed enough in the ideas, we asked them to answer our question in the form of a poem, with the suggested form going something like:

_________________________
pero....

_________________________
pero....

________________________
pero....

_________________________
pero...

Rachel told me that some students had never written original poetry before. A few struggled and others really enjoyed it. Rae told them that poetry writing was like the experience of a dam that breaks, once you start flowing, you can’t stop! It was true. They wrote very sweet and intense poems about true love.

Making Sense of A Census

2008-07-23T15:14:00.001-07:00

CENSUS DIALOGUE

We led everyone in a very interesting discussion on census as a way to introduce the idea of creating a cordel. First questions were asked to generate a dialogue about experiences with census and to gain an understanding of the type of questions that were asked, by whom and for what purposes. We let them know that we would identify a group question for the community to ponder in a public space. After we collectively gained an understanding of local census taking we asked why census collections occur and what often gets lost in a census when the emphasis is on fact collection.

THE UNACCOUNTED FOR QUESTIONS

We asked students to think about what they might like to know about their community that never gets asked. At first students struggled with this idea but after a few examples, they came up with some wonderful questions:

Where do you hide your most beautiful things?
How many stories exist about ghosts?
Why are people afraid of ghosts?
Have you forgotten the stories of the past?
Why has the president of Honduras failed us?
How many sincere people live in this community?
Would you die for love?
How many people here need true love?
How many people would like to forget their past?
Who here doesn’t like to dance?

QUESTION ELECTIONS

We pooled all our questions together and took a vote. Everyone could vote twice among four different questions. It was down to two questions. Everyone could only vote then on one. The question that won: HOW MANY PEOPLE NEED TRUE LOVE? We brainstormed words and images related to this question to prepare us for the poetry writing.

Warming Up to Text/Image Process

2008-07-23T15:11:00.000-07:00

INTRODUCTIONS/BACK TO BACK

We started with warm up exercises to encourage students to feel comfortable with one another and with us in a workshop setting. We put our chairs in a circle and went around to share everyone’s names. Next we asked everyone to move around the space and when Rachel or I called freeze, each person had to find a partner with someone and lean on them, back to back. We posed a question and then each had to turn to the other and share a response. The questions:

Who is the funniest or most interesting person in your family?
What is a story that you heard passed down to you from your grandparents or elders?

We heard many interesting stories. One was about a child who was abandoned in the mountain because her family was to poor to feed her. She continued to follow clues that led her back to her home until one day she was rescued by a woman in the mountains and there lived o n happily. Another was about a young man’s grandfather who was a hunter. He and his friends crossed paths with an enormous buck who was impenetrable by the hunters bullets. The magical buck walked away into thin air and the legend continues.

EXQUISITE CORPSE

After hearing these stories, we asked everyone to play the famous surrealist game “exquisite corpse,” just to warm up to the idea of images and text together. Students broke into groups of four and each had to draw a part and pass it. Once all the parts were finished, the original head was returned to the person who drew it and that person had to create text for each part of the body. This was a playful warm up to the idea of text and image together.

A Description of our Project

2008-07-23T15:10:00.000-07:00

When conducting an official census, what are the unofficial, unaccounted for questions of a community? Are some facts more significant than others? Who asks the questions and who gets to answer them? In this project, we set out to explore the questions that go unaccounted for in an official census by inaugurating a “census of the senses.”

The seed for the idea emerged from that fact that El Pital recently went through a census process to gather information and capture facts related to livestock, literacy, yearly income, number of people per family, etc. Rachel and I thought about how the official anything always omits the unofficial everything of life. We wanted to pose the idea of politicizing a census through a poetic investigation of it. Some might call this a kind of "mocking" of official census gathering, but we like to think of it more like a lovely counterpart to the official work of gathering community information.

In partnership with Un Mundo, the students of El Pital, and Break Arts, we designed a workshop that would encourage students ages 13-16 years old to investigate the hidden and layered feelings of a community. We knew we wanted to combine the power of text and image with the public performance of a cordel, based on the tradition of “string literature” hanging from ropes in the public squares of Brazil, dating back to the 1500’s (appendix A). Beyond that, we invited the students to guide the direction and scope of this project, asking the students to direct the content and questions (appendix B). We wanted teenagers in El Pital to consider the differences between qualititative and quantitative research, and to consider the poetics that exist behind census numbers. Finally, for ourselves and for our students, we wanted to use the arts as social practice to help us "make sense of a census" by playing with the notion of "official" when speaking about feeling. In this way, all of us were digging for and illuminating a kind of intelligence rooted in feeling.

We hoped that this project would instigate meaningful and otherwise muted conversation on a question of collective interest and significance. The project is multi-disciplinary to capture voices and perspectives. This was a four day project, limited by the fact that Honduran teachers had been on strike due to not being paid for over 6 months of work.

Teacher Strikes, Impromptu Book Making Workshops, First Days

2008-07-23T15:06:00.001-07:00

SUNDAY ARRIVAL

we arrived in el pital in the late afternoon, just as the sun was setting on large white rocks in a rushing river flowing between luscious mountains of green on either side. on the way a little girl sang a song about elephants. we rode on an old school bus, winding the curvacious roads, and hopped off at the home of lola, santos, and their two children, alba and minor. they would become our new best friends for the rest of our time her. rachel has known this beautiful family for six years. they are campesinos who live in el pital and who work off the land, growing beans. alba loves photography and writing books. minor, who has cerebral palsy, smiles these gorgeous smiles with sparkling brown eyes. he is obsessed with the orange cat, paco. lola and santos are in their 30`s. lola teaches me her top 30 spanish words that i must learn, they are all words related to homesteading and womanhood '' how do you say ring, how do you say pan, how do you say necklace, how do you say chili jar. baby chickens hop around our tired feet. we sat and sipped hot, dark coffee with lola and santos. alba played with the cat, paco. a huge storm brought pounding rain and we sat in their home, rain slamming against the tin roof.

when the rain stopped, we walked down a very steep and rocky path to the home where we would stay for the week. it´s on a cliff overlooking the white rocks of the congrejal river below. our doorway frames thick and luscious layers of green plants and trees. that first night, rae and i made all sorts of teaching plans as we settled into the un mundo house. santos and lola came with the children for dinner and we danced, played exquisite corpse, and colored together. we fell asleep to a rushing river down below, bright fireflies, and a huge net of stars above.

MONDAY, MEETING THE PRINCIPAL

on monday, we met with oscar, the school director, and other teachers at the school, and decided to work with older students since the elementary school has been on strike for 2 weeks. after meeting with all the school personnel, and watching the development of the school being built, we sipped pepsi´s and tried to make a plan that would work for a four day workshop. we planned on a red bench situated under a tin roof of a small pulpuseria, the only shade to be found for miles. the sun was like an oven. once we made our plan, monday was all about going back to la ceiba to get supplies. we would work with 2 groups of high school students, mostly girls in a home/ec class. we returned to la ceiba and walked the sweltering, tropical streets, skipping over holes in the sidewalk, and soaking in the scene. we returned with armfuls of supplies, only after realizing that we had missed the last bus back to el pital.

HITCHHIKING -- MOURNING & MADNESS

we stood by a corner and waited to hitchhike back up the mountain. a red pick up truck accepted us, along with three other passengers. as the truck peeled out, racing at top speeds on the curving roads, i thought i was going to die. i sat on the edge of the truck and held on for dear life. within minutes we learned that the woman riding with us in the back had just found out that her mother had died and couldn´t stop crying. manuel, one guy, kept asking me if i was single. and the other man was high, carrying a machete, wearing a ¨springfield dance¨ t shirt, and a yellow cap, mumbling and smiling to himself. rae and i looked at each other and our jaw dropped as rain started pounding down on all 5 of us. the driver got of the car, gave us plastic covering, and the five of us all huddled under it as the driver drove at top speeds. i didn´t know to laugh or cry. this was life and we were living it. we had to throw our hands up. i was relieved to arrive soaked and alive.

TUESDAY -- HONDURAN TEACHERS ON STRIKE

we woke with good plans. we found out that the entire school system was on strike, though. no high school classes either. all the teachers had not been paid in 6 months and there was growing resentment. after visiting the lcoal women´s sewing coop on the other side of the river, where rachel loves and knows the director, rosario, we headed back over the river on the canasta (a basket on wire cable suspended over the river). again, i didn´t look down, the way that yesterday, i couldn´t look back!

BOOK MAKING ON THE STREET

we decided to conduct an informal class of bookmaking with local children, some who don't know how to read write and they don't go to school, and others who are out of school b-c of the strike. our students were 13 years or under, our youngest being javier, who doesn´t talk and is about 5. we met at the same spot where we planned the day before because this is the only store on the main road, the only two benches to sit. and the kids just naturally gather here. we demonstrated book making folds, and then coached everyone to write a story, letter, or poem inside. i have never seen kids work so hard at writing. rachel was a brilliant and magnificent translator the whole time.

melbi and elbin, twins, wrote picture books. another boy wrote a book about teaching his friend to read and write. two girls wrote letters to their best friends and baby brothers-sisters. one girl was writing to her unborn baby sister or brother, saying that she really hoped for a sister b-c she didn´t like boys! but she´d love them just the same...after making and writing our books, we marched and paraded, singing a song about books, and we gathered in a little spot to read and share. among the random horse, cow, chickens, and pigs, the children read their stories and explained their pictures. they were captivated by each others´stories but eventually the sun seduced us to the river, and we jumped in, after hiking down a steep path to river´s edge. the sun beat down on us and we played, relaxed. it was such a beautiful day.

WEDNESDAY -- INITIAL CENSUS QUESTION GATHERING

we crossed our fingers for the school to open again because we really wanted to teach our workshop! and then this morning we heard the 7 am bus roar down the main road. even though the rest of the country´s schools were closed, oscar, the director, decided to keep it open. we worked with 6 students today, all freshman, and wrote poems related to the unaccountable census (in response to a current census happening in el pital). we asked: what are the unaccounted for questions in a census¿ what questions never get asked? what do we want to know that can´t be measured by numbers¿ we talked about ghosts, snakes, forgotten histories, beautiful possessions, first memories, dreams, and secrets. they each chose a word and created a stencil to match the word or somehow express it. the students were like anywhere, somewhat shy, giggly, awkward, and wonderful.

THE HUNGER TO WRITE, TO SPEAK

still, there were many distractions -- thin walls made it hard to hear when the other classes were loud in the other rooms. taechers kept stopping in to see what we were doing and talking to each other. little children from the store acorss the street wandered into the classroom to see if they could help, draw, and take photos. what i am moved by is the desire anywhere to write, to participate, to learn, and then once those conditions are set up, to question, respond, wonder, and locate oneself in the bigger picture, in this newfound dynamic between teachers and students. and then there is language -- the need for me to know spanish to truly read and understand the relationship. i am becoming more and more aware of how all of us are bound up in the languages we speak, and how it´s difficult to separate self from language, language from culture, culture from self.

Making Our Way to El Pital

2008-07-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

GETTING THERE

i left chicago before the sun rose in the midst of a huge thunderstorm, and arrived on a small island, full of heat and palm trees, warm smiles and lost luggage. that´s right. my taca flight changed depature times about 5 times, and in the meantime, the luggage was switched like one of those games where there´s only one marble and three cups, switch, switch, switch! i stayed on the island of roatan for only a few hours, enough to buy a plate of frites and sip a cold coke while waiting for my flight to la ceiba, where i was going to meet rachel. it´s only a half hour but somehow, the luggage was misplaced in that last leg of the journey...the flights, flying, through a sea of clouds, always astounds me. shadows of clouds. shadows as the idea of a cloud. shadow as a memory of a cloud. shadows stacked inside the cloud. shadow as the sister of the cloud. the sky is amazing.

IN LA CEIBA

rachel met me at the airport in la ceiba and we laughed, embraced, shrugged our shoulders at the lost luggage situation, and headed out to our place for the night, an arte-gallery & bed-breakfast all in one. of course we got a lift from rae´s new friend jonathan, whom she met while hitchhiking down to greet me. jonathan is a sustainable agricultural dude from the states, and now lives here. he was the one who dropped us at the bed and breakast...! this was a lovely little place full of art work inspired by the coast and all things carribean. we were met by christina and nicolas, a sister-brother team who just so gracefully ran the family business. we stayed in a little room and lounged beneath the ceiling fan, dripping with sweat. the next morning, christina was on the phone with taca trying to work things out and in the end, we taxied back to the airport and there it was, my little red beat up suitcase. this after i realized that i really didn´t need anything in that suitcase after all! (except the art supplies, which i was happy to have back for our project.)

CEIBA STREETS

on the first night here, we walked through the damp, crumbling port town yesterday evening, marveling the infiltration of dunkin donuts, pizza hut, wendy´s, and burger king, crushed together with faulty buildings on their way up or down, we couldn´t tell, and lots of little clothing shops, tiendas, and metal'corrugated roof top kiosks selling candies, cigarettes, and plastic toys hanging like fruit on their plastic vines. the air was warm and tropical, rae and i talked intensely about development and whose mission really matters when there are people like us, artists who want to make the world a better place, and christian missionaries, who also want to make the world a better place. we are both sensing a kind of vulnerability in a city, a country so poor like honduras, but what is our response, and how do we this kind of work in the most human, and just way possible? we are both struck by the number of missionaries here who we feel take advantage of peoples´vulnerabilities. but then '-- we too have our own kind of mission, so we grapple with this idea in general -- of travel, encounter, and the desire to connect through the language of art, expression, beauty, and meaning'making. it´s a strange balance to strike. but we are so eager to be with and meet our students in the mountain town of el pital.

there are holes up and down the sidewalks, falling apart churches and signs of the past with united and standard fruit company architecture. this town was built on the banana republic and while the infrastructure is there, it´s unreliable. cars zoom with total disregard for traffic signals. palm trees and lush vegetation lines the broken roads, and all over there are men and women on bicycles and on foot, carrying their wares in bags and balancing them on their heads. goats and horses also roam the sides of the roads, grazing in grass next to auto supply and tow companies. it´s a collage of city and rural all in one here. and the breeze is beautiful, the birds, an orchestra of coast (orcoastra).

BEER & BALEADA, BEANS & RICE

there are two main kinds of beer here, imperial, and la salavida. interesting pair there. rae and i ate streetside at a baleada, a flour tortilla spot. red plastic chairs and coca cola plastic tables. a light rain, drizzle. we ran across the street to buy the local beers, only to be told by the dona that the back room is for men over 24 years of age only, and that if we wanted to buy beer we had to put it in cups and either sit in the front where she could see us or take it across the street. okay we said no problem. she apologized and said she was feeling ashamed but that was her custom and she was sticking to the establishment. the men sat with their eyes glued to the television watching futbol as if it were god and they were congregants. the dona kept looking at us. we were taking her in, her strong matronly presence, and her fierce look in her eye that told us she was not to be messed with but that she loved us endlessly. we sipped imperially, we sipped the salvation, we sipped and talked about arts education and development. we sipped and laughed and curriculum dreamed. and then we took a few cups across the street to eat.

today we woke and had a typical honduran breakfast '' beans, rice, bacon, eggs, bread, and tomatoes with cheese with cappucinos. we ran back to the airport to pick up my luggage and then went to the supermercado to prepare for the bus trip to el pital. this place is a huge mega mall, from where i write to you now. it´s kind of insane, the strip malling of central america. the stripping of culture. the stripping of dignity. of cultural memory. of collective strenght. i´m learning about the effect that poverty has on a nation´s pyche, and what a nation is willing to accept when feeling desperate. evangelical wendy´s. first baptist burger kings. i´m torn and amazed and confused.

WHY I TRAVEL

this is what i love about travel--the reminder that there is life everywhere, many lives happening all at once, emotion and experience, action and reaction. the world is full of luscious contradiction. cool air con blasting at the airport, no running water at a local bathroom. beeping taxis but few road signs. an abundance of avocados but recent rains drown all the tomatoes and mold attacked many of the other crops. the terrain here is rugged and elevated, tiered and stacked with vegetation, giant trees, and low shrubs and bushes, all surrounded by a mountain range and low hanging clouds that frame the port city of la ceiba. we had fun at the market buying more supplies for our project '' laundry lines, and such. we are going to do a poetics project that has to do with mapping hidden parts of poems. we will meet with oscar, the principal, tomorrow morning, to discuss the details. until then, we are going to the bus station to catch a ride up the mountain and when we get there, we are goign to have a taco party with rachel´s close honduran friends and host family here.

LOOKING AROUND & AHEAD

there are few caballeros here -- people are sporting western looks and enjoy blasting spanish pop songs everywhere. the energy is calm and relaxed, except when attempting to cross a street! people are helpful and reserved, at least as a first impression. we are going to work with 4th and 5th graders up by the guinka, the watershed. and we are also going to lead 2 writing workshops with high school students. we might also visit a school associated with an orphanage but that hasn´t been confirmed yet.

rachel and i are excited to be here together. i´m sinking into life here, and even though i´m here for such a short time, i´m ready to be here and present, listening in and taking notice of everything around me. rachel is my guide and light here, making quick decisions and navigating all the beauty and confusion of a language that is just slowly emerging within me. she and i are pushing each other to think about the various shapes that this work takes '-- art and social practice, art and community development, art and social change -- there are layers and nuance and few things we know to be true as absolutes. all is circumstantial and so dependent on honest, real listening. to ourselves, to the world around us.